Flight 3

After my last escapade, and following good advice on here, I decided to find a field with much more room and much further way from houses, pubs and other flying hazards that I am a danger to.

I went to a football field on the edge of the area where it backs onto farmers fields. A good place to have a third bite of the cherry.

I went on my own so had no video footage but a mate did turn up later ant took a photo of one of my crash landings.

Fuelled the plane up and up she went. This time it felt even easier as I have spend a few hours on the IPad simulator since flihgt 2. I was doing laps and figure eights and all sorts of patterns without much difficulty. I was also trying to tighten my turns up instead of making hte long sweeping ones I had always been doing. This allowed me to fly slightly tighter shapes and gave me a feeling of greater control. you just have to be very careful not to try and turn too much and result in coing too far over into a dive. That could end badly unless you have some good altitude.

I flew around for around 5 minutes just getting a feel of the planes behaviour and how it flies before thinking it was time to try the dreaded landings again. this time I drooped to 50% throttle and just tried to circle like this but allowing the plane to descend slowly until I felt it was time to turn in for an approcah. At this point I have no designated runway as I am concentrating solely on the descent and level wings. One step at a time I thought. I eased her down and started to run out of field. It was too late to pull out and I just had to let her float into the dense bushes at the end of the field. No harm was done and I brushed all the plant matter off her and went to refuel.

Went up agian with no problems and my friend was asking if it did loops or rolls so I said yes but I've not done any yet. At that point I fancied a go so I throttled up and then nosed down slightly before pulling back up into a big loop. and again into a second. Fairly easy I thought but not something I will be doing all the time until I cna fly properly. I did the same with rolls and after a couple carried on flying normally. I came around to try another landing and the plane was what I thought going to come down at the back of the field. This time my judgement of distance was poor as the plane dropped behind the trees at the back of the field. I just had to cut the throttle and keep easing back the elevator. I didnt hear much of a crash so guessed the landing was half decent. I had to go around to get over the drainage ditch and recover my plane. It had landed right in a load of marsh reeds which gave it a nice cushion. Pic is here:


I refuelled again for another go. I was up flying and making steady progress and threw in a few more loops and rolls. I said I wouldn't but couldn't resist. The flying about was getting easier by the minute but it was the landings that were still the ones to get the hang of. Before starting to try landings I did a few more rolls and a few more loops. On about my third loop the front wheel fell off!! It was one of those front wheels that normally steers so turns freely but had been modified to be fixed. To do this the arm coming from the wheel wire was just screwed to teh underside of the plane. The screw had obviously become loose and the wheel plumetted to earth in the field near us. The landing was going to be interesting now.

So I got her nice and slow and brought her over the far edge of the field coming accross the front of us at a nice rate of descent. Right before touch down I flared slowly just to make sure the back wheels came in first to try and avoit nosing over. It worked and she just skidded a few yards before stopping nicely.

The lessone learnt here is to check your wheels are all weell fixed as this could cause somebody a nasty headache.

I retired back home after that to gather my thoughts and carry out the repair to the wheel and also a small hole in the wing film which I guess was from my first incident with the bushes or my crash landing.